˖᯽ ݁˖’s Reviews > Escape Me > Status Update

“I’m transferring powerful energy into her body—much more than is strictly necessary—and I’m starting to worry it won’t be enough. I’m worried it’s too late. My strength is waning, my head growing lighter as the minutes pass. This is taking too long.
I can’t accept that she’s really dead.
I won’t.”

“A choked, broken sound cracks open my chest.
Rosabelle looks dead.
Truly dead.
I’ve known grief; I’ve buried bodies; but this feeling is somehow unlike anything I’ve felt before. It’s so colossal it seems to bury me with dirt from my own grave. I’m so heavy with it that for a moment I can’t move.
And then: denial.
This can’t be real.”

“Do you think this is a joke to me?” James says. The pain in his voice reaches me here; breaks apart my ribs. “Do you really think I’m going to let this go? I find out she was in recovery because he broke her fucking face—”
“Stop,” Warner says, the word like a gunshot.

“I know you’re in there.” James is shouting. “Open this door right now or I’ll break it down.”
“Please,” I gasp, shaking my head at Warner. “Don’t. You can’t.”
Warner is looking at me with an almost scientific astonishment. He doesn’t react to the sound of his brother’s anger. He doesn’t even flinch when James bangs on the door again.
He just stares at me.
“Wow,” he says.”

“I reach out unsteadily for support, finding none, and as I stumble, a wash of moonlight blinds me. My lips are chapped. My muscles spasm with weakness, joints throbbing. My face hurts.
Warner is staring at me in stunned amazement.”

“I can’t see James through the window, but it’s enough to know that he’s here.
I can feel him.”

“Do you have any idea what this would do to him?” Warner says. “Never knowing how you really feel? Thinking you’d betrayed him?”
“I’m trying to save him.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to shackle yourself to a monster—”
“I’ve been shackled to monsters all my life.”

:(

“I’ve never even allowed myself to think these words. I haven’t even allowed myself to draw near this wildfire in my chest, this persistent agony.
Every thought of him delivers me a little death.
If this is love, I hate it.”

rosa:(

“And I know,” he says quietly, “why you’re so talkative now. I know why you were hysterical in the hospital. I know why you care about saving our soft, loud world. I can’t believe I couldn’t see it before. You’ve done a fine job hiding it, Rosabelle. Well done.”
“What are you talking about?” I whisper.
Warner locks eyes with me, then drives a blade through my chest. “You love him.”